Tunnel bounce region (High latency)
Hiya,
I've set-up a cloudflare tunnel to get past the CGNAT my ISP enforces. While I was able to get the service up and my web servers proxied, I'm getting abysmal latency when trying to access it.
I noticed that it's routing the traffic through Germany (I'm in India) and this is leading to an unnecessarily long path and therefore high latency. Some of the web apps I'm trying to test rely heavily on user input and are latency intensive.
Cloudflare has a plethora of servers based in and around India that would make for a much smoother experience. Would it be possible for me to select which region my tunnel bounces off of?
I'm still new to this and I'd love some help - thanks!
5 Replies
Your tunnel is connecting to CF in Germany? (can see in logs, ex
journalctl -u cloudflared -f --lines=500 (if on systemd/linux), and/or you are connecting to CF in germany (which you could see via the path /cdn-cgi/trace on your tunnel public hostname and looking for colo=?
With Tunnels the only region you can specify is US, and with your actual connection you are just routed based on your ISP@Chaika Unless I'm misunderstanding something here - my tunnel seems to be connecting to CF in germany. I've tried accessing via multiple ISPs and VPNs and it's still routing via Frankfurt.
If it's not possible to change regions then I'm probably going to have to go back to a VPS + Wireguard reverse proxy solution.
Also, apologies for bombarding with images - I didnt even know I could /cdn-cgi/ on existing public hostnames. But yes, tunnelling through frankfurt indeed.
You mentioned initially "India", which has been a well discussed topic from time to time.
One provider, such as e.g. Bharti Airtel, have been well known for routing traffic to either Frankfurt or London, causing huge latency for the users.
In that case, it is a business decision by Bharti Airtel, because they refuse to establish settlement-free peering with Cloudflare locally (e.g. within their own country, or nearby countries), which for e.g. Bharti Airtel means that the route typically takes an alternative, but very long path, typically over London or Frankfurt peerings facilities instead.
Deutsche Telekom (DTAG), from Germany, have had quite some discussion over the past few weeks, where they are sending traffic from users in Germany (and neighbouring countries) over New York, United States, which is similarly causing high latency due to the kind of intercontinental routing it results in.
Unfortunately, Cloudflare won't be able to do anything about these things, when the individual providers are refusing to cooperate in improving the routing by establishing settlement-free peering sessions and connecting the networks together "locally".
I'm not using a mainstream provider, and before this, I have never experienced getting my traffic routed via Germany.
But I do understand that it's not something that can be changed on cloudflare's end.
Thanks for the help.